


Out of Goodbyes

by andchaos



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Coda, Episode s05e03 Coda, Gen, Goodbyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Mandy get their ending, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title is totally a Maroon 5 song because. Well. I don't know, I've been listening to a lot of M5 lately. Anyway, I think they deserve their ending. Mandy deserves better than to be remembered curled up on a bed after Lip has fucked her over one more time. She deserves her best fucking friend.
> 
> I am furious about her ending, so here we go. Kinda sad, FYI.
> 
> dedicated to mickeyandmandy.tumblr.com, for airing our grievances together, because Mandy Milkovich deserves so much better.

          When it rained, Mandy cried.

          She didn’t point it out, and she didn’t sob or anything, just a few tears here and there to let the warm mingle with the icy drops on her face. She never said anything, she usually just smiled through it. In fact, Ian had taken two years to even notice—but he had eventually noticed. What else were best friends for?

          When she cried, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pressed a kiss to her head. She would shove him off and curse at him and he would playfully duck her punches and sometimes jab back at her, an _I love you_ hidden in every smack. But the very next time it rained, she would cry again.

          Mandy didn’t really cry any other times. Ian knew she didn’t want anyone to see her when she was vulnerable; he knew how dangerous weakness had been in her childhood. After awhile, he noticed that she sought out the rain. Even someone like Mandy, a girl forged with steel bones and iron skin, rusted sometimes. She needed a release every now and again, and took it where she could get it.

          Ian noticed other things about her too. She put twice as much cream cheese on her bagels than a normal person would. Her favorite movie was The Princess Bride, even though she pretended it was Shoot ‘Em Up. She would eat grilled cheese for every meal if Mickey didn’t complain that too much dairy irritated his stomach. She liked hard liquor better than beer, but wouldn’t drink rum under any circumstances. She would complain if Taylor Swift played on the radio, but when he turned it up under pretense of annoying her, she would smile out the window after a minute or two. She stole poetry out of kids’ lockers in high school and plastered the pages around the walls of her closet so that she could mark it up in red pen and make fun of them by herself. And when it rained, she cried.

          Mickey was sleeping, worn out after two rounds the way Ian used to be, and Ian wandered into the kitchen for a late-night snack. The light that spilled across the floor when he opened the fridge illuminated a figure on the back porch. Ian grabbed a pudding pack out from between week-old dinner that he hadn’t cleaned out yet, and wandered over to the back door. He paused before opening it, studying the blonde-haired, black-clad figure sitting bathed in moonlight. A light drizzle had fogged the glass, and he drew a small doodle on it and turned the handle.

          Mandy looked up at the sound of Ian shoving open the screen door, and she offered a tired smile before turning back towards the lawn. He sat down heavily next to her, not saying a word. She didn’t speak either, just laid her head on his shoulder and took a drag on the cigarette between her fingers. They watched the smoke spiral outwards towards the metal fence that blocked off the property.

          Mandy broke the silence first. “What’ve you got there?” she asked, nodding towards the snack in his hand.

          “Pudding pack,” he answered, and the tear of the lid sounded extra loud in the quietness of the night.

          “Chocolate?”

          “Vanilla,” he answered. She nodded in appreciation, and he held it up towards her face. “Want some?”

          “You got a spoon?” she asked, and when he shrugged she didn’t hesitate to dip her index and middle finger right into it, sucking it off determinedly. He copied the movement and silence fell for another minute or so.

          “Listen, Mandy—” he started, but she knocked her shoulder into his and cut him off.

          “You’re not gonna tell me not to go, are you?” she asked derisively. “Cos I already got the whole speech from your brother.”

          “You saw Lip?”

          She rolled her eyes. “In a way,” she said, then smirked. “That girlfriend of his…guess she’s not so serious, huh?”

          Ian smiled at her, a little sadly. “Guess not,” he agreed. “You gonna see him again or something?”

          She shrunk in on herself at that, probably guessing where he was going with this. A few inches appeared between them on the top step, and he wanted to reach out and hug her, but she seemed very far away.

          “I don’t know,” she said, voice ghostly with her face hidden in shadow like that. “He asked me to get coffee tomorrow morning. Said I wasn’t worth Kenyatta’s shit or something, whatever. Like anybody cares, right?”

          “I care,” Ian said immediately, fiercely. “Fuck him. Both of them,” he clarified, at her raised eyebrows. “You’re so beautiful, Mands. And worth so much more than that piece of shit. You gotta know that. You’re important.”

          For a second, she looked as though he had struck her. Then she recovered her composure, snorted, and reached over for more pudding.

          “Fuck off,” she said affectionately, slinging her arm around his shoulders. She laid her head back down. “Can we just…not talk about this right now?”

          He hesitated. “Sure,” he said. She exhaled like he had shoved the world off of her shoulders, then reached up for another drag, but he snatched her cigarette away and took one for himself. She laughed and pushed herself up, grabbing at it, but he shoved her back and kept smoking just to annoy her.

          “You’re a real jackass, you know that?” she said, finally relenting, only to turn to her other side and light up a new one.

          “I know,” he said, still smiling a little. She caught his expression in her peripherals, huffed out a laugh, and shook her head.

          They had mostly demolished the pudding, and they finished it off within another five minutes. They barely spoke, just smoked and occasionally caught each other’s eye. Eventually their cigarettes both burned out, and they threw them onto the grass, watching the smoke dissipate and the embers cool. Mandy gripped his arm, sighing, laying her temple against his bicep. He shook her a little and laid his head on top of hers.

          “I love you, Mandy,” he said, his voice rumbly and quiet. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

          She didn’t answer. In fact, she barely moved, and for a second he thought she had fallen asleep. He looked down, and her eyes were closed; he sighed and shook off one of her hands so that he could hold it in his own.

          After a minute, she answered, her voice like the wind and stars and as lost as she always looked, far away like her eyes always were, nowadays.

          “I love you too,” she breathed.

          The drizzle started to pour heavier. Water, cold at first and then interlaced with warm, splattered against the skin of his arm, underneath where Mandy lay her head.

          Mandy liked winter. She liked snowball fights and ugly knitted beanies and sweaters big enough to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She poured coffee in her cereal if she’d been up all night having sex. She hummed in the shower. She hid white-out in her work uniform so that she could give herself bigger tips. She threw rocks through policemen’s windows every time one of her brothers got arrested. She blasted heavy metal while she got ready for bed. She hugged Ian every time she saw him. When it rained, she cried.

          “We should get inside,” she said eventually, and he pretended not to hear how her voice hitched, or notice how red her eyes were when she lifted her head. They could pretend that she was high as a kite, and that everything was okay.

          “Yeah.”

          He stood up first, pulling her to her feet. She kept her grip—one hand on his arm, the other wrapped in his—as they stumbled towards the house. In the kitchen, Ian tugged her to a stop. She looked up at him, lips parted in confusion, her eyes so so red.

          He pulled her into his arms, felt her own clasp around his waist, and pretended not to notice where his shirt started to soak through at the shoulder. Warm.

          She pulled away, wiping at her nose, fussing with her hair, and offered him a wobbly smile.

          “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. She seemed to have infected him, because suddenly he was trembling, too.

          “’Bye.”

          She waved. He lifted a hand in farewell, and then she turned and disappeared around the corner.

          He looked away, towards where Mickey was fast asleep in their room, then wandered back onto the back porch. One more cigarette before he went to bed.

          Mandy wasn’t the only one who liked to hide in the rain.

 

 

In the morning, she was gone.


End file.
